MD-GSP, yes, your opinion is a big part of it but it's not so much setting up situations to succeed as much as shaping another discipline off the collar. This dog is a pro for games with four years of electronic training. I'm easing into "stern but fair treatment" off the shocks, to do it for me and not to avoid pain, to be a real dog as you say.
As for the old remedy "cure," who can say empirically the spit did it and not stern and fair repetition and patience? It seems to me old ways often stick around because of a fair measure of success, perhaps with even a better record of reality than the accepted supernatural that the earth was created 2,000 years ago.
The remedy has been around since at least before the last century, there's David Michael Duffey's 1965 book endorsement of spit in particular situations, and my own experience of a transformation from a completely broken spirit. There's no advantage to anyone to make it up. I suspect old-timers and professionals recommend it because it (sometimes) works.
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